WWE is expected to use the weeks after WrestleMania to shuffle parts of its weekly shows, with SmackDown set for a presentation refresh and the roster potentially being adjusted again. The report said the changes would not touch SmackDown’s logo or theme song right now.
The refresh lands in a period when WWE has been careful about nearly everything it says involving Brock Lesnar. At WrestleMania, Lesnar lost to Oba Femi, then left his boots in the ring and threw up the "x" after the match, and announcers sounded shaken by what they saw. Since then, broadcasts have been notably cautious in the way they discuss him.
Dave Meltzer said some people inside WWE do not believe Lesnar has actually retired, and the way the company is handling him suggests there is still uncertainty around his status. The feud between Lesnar and Femi was originally expected to go beyond WrestleMania, which makes the silence around Lesnar more striking than the match itself.
WrestleVotes framed the SmackDown update as a presentation refresh, with the bigger change likely coming through how the roster is arranged rather than through a new logo or song. That fits the broader post-WrestleMania pattern, when WWE usually retools weekly programming and the Raw after WrestleMania often delivers the biggest storyline shifts and debuts.
There was also movement on another front. Meltzer said Pat McAfee "opted out" of the Cody Rhodes-Randy Orton storyline, and that decision changes the intended plans for Backlash. Elsewhere, Fightful Select reported that things are fine between MJF and AEW, even as the writeup said MJF is no longer the top guy there right now. Taken together, the reports point to a company and its rivals both in the middle of a reset, with Lesnar’s next step still the biggest unresolved piece.